


In Want

by updiddlyupup



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Bonding, Early Days, Gen, Miscommunication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-08-30 13:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8534962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/updiddlyupup/pseuds/updiddlyupup
Summary: Desperate to avoid all the ways he isn't settling in, Anakin goes on a quest.





	1. Chapter 1

Back on Tatooine, Anakin Skywalker hadn’t had so much a bedroom as a storage closet which also contained his bed. His assigned room at the Jedi temple is easily three times as large, yet somehow simultaneously three times less comforting. It has a window, out of which can be seen several anonymous buildings and the arching lines of speeder traffic in the distance. It also contains a sleeping pallet, and a small wardrobe within which the few sets of padawan robes he had been fitted for on Naboo were kept. The walls were bare and a pale cream, broken only by said wardrobe and the door exiting out into the shared living space he now avoids with Master Obi-wan.

  
When he had made the decision to come to the temple and train to be a Jedi, he had known it was going to be hard work. He had learned later, standing in front of the council, that there were going to be those who opposed his presence here, just because he was different. It hadn’t occurred to him, in that moment or any other before the death of Qui-gon Jinn and the subsequent transfer of his training to Obi-wan, that the people who wouldn’t accept him were all of them.

  
He hadn’t expected to feel so alone.

  
He couldn’t change the Jedi. A few snide comments from the younger padawans aside, they were nothing but distantly polite to him, helping if he asked, redirecting if he got lost, and being calmly reserved in the face of his many and varied mishaps. Still, he couldn’t help the feeling they were judging him, somewhere behind those identical blank facades. Even Obi-wan, who he saw far more often than any other Jedi, rarely slipped in his portrayal of perfect Jedi-hood. If he hadn’t seen him in the aftermath of Naboo, still far too shaken in his grief to pretend anything, then he might have felt himself alone in this. As it was, he felt unwilling to push.

  
Lonely or not, his presence here hinged on Obi-wan’s insistence in training him. If the man felt no need to reach out to Anakin, then Anakin was not going to reach back. There was too much at stake, he would simply have to cope with what he was feeling by himself. He couldn’t risk Obi-wan deciding the Council was right not to train him after all.

  
He would just have to change one of the few things he did have control over, namely his room. Obi-wan never came in, preferring to knock then wait for Anakin to join him in the living area, and therefore even if redecorating was against the rules - and he’d never bothered to find out whether this was true or not - no one would ever see what he’d done anyway. The only difficulty would be in sneaking everything in, and not making enough noise that Obi-wan would come and investigate.

  
His first task was finding something to decorate with. For people who’d apparently been around thousands and thousands of years, the Jedi sure hadn’t managed to accumulate much stuff. Anakin was only nine, but his room back at his mum’s place had been so full that there almost hadn’t been enough room to fit in any Anakin.

  
Surely, he thought, they must get given a ton of stuff from people grateful for having their world saved. It must just be locked away somewhere that Anakin hadn’t seen yet. He’d just have to find it.

  
Unfortunately, going searching the temple for cool stuff without Obi-wan noticing was not an easy task. For all their tendency to avoid each other, the man had sharp and suspicious ears.

  
“Going out?” asked Obi-wan, like Anakin wasn’t standing halted halfway though their front door. He thought quickly, but could think of no legitimate reason to be doing what he was doing. Obi-wan knew his schedule, and that he was yet to make any friends in the temple. He’d just have to settle for a ‘not as illegitimate as what he’d actually been intending to do’ reason. He pouted, in the vain hope it had started working on Obi-wan any time since he’d last tried it.

  
“Just going to check out the maintenance bay, since I couldn’t sleep,” he said. The pout didn’t seen to have gained any efficiency since it was last deployed, so he slipped it in to a slightly worried smile instead. Obi-wan didn’t look too annoyed, but then he didn’t look like he was going to let things go either. His right brow had risen just slightly, and beneath the beard he’d been trying to grow his mouth thinned. If anything, Anakin thought he looked a mix between disbelieving and regretful.

  
“Anakin,” he began, reaching down to grab hold of Anakin’s collar and gently tug him back inside, “I realise I haven’t exactly been approachable these last few months-” Obi-wan, Anakin had noticed, had quite the gift for understatement. He let himself be led to the couch, and sat down next to Obi-wan. “-But I hope,” Obi-wan continued, “That you know you can talk to me about anything that’s been bothering you.”

  
Anakin only just managed to reign in his disbelieving stare before it could make it’s way to his face, instead just settling for blinking stupidly. He hadn’t even told his mom everything that was bothering him, why would he tell the man who’d spent the better part of six months pretending he didn’t exist.

  
“It’s nothing, Master,” he said, doing his best to sound sincere. He was pretty good at it, because he’d had to be. “I just get restless sometimes, and going and fixing something helps calm me down.”

  
“Oh,” said Obi-wan. Anakin knew that this fit in with everything else his Master knew about him, and would explain the several occasions Obi-wan had had to hunt him down and drag him out bodily from the Maintenance bay when there were things he really didn’t want to be doing elsewhere. Meditation practice with three year olds was the worst, especially as it was usually taught by Master Yoda.

  
“How about,” said Obi-wan, “the next time you’re feeling restless, you come and find me and we’ll go to the maintenance bay together. I may not have your gift with machines, but I can be pretty handy when I want to.” Obi-wan gave a tentative smile, and Anakin realised, maybe for the first time, that he wasn’t the only one who didn’t really know what he was doing. Sure, you’d never get the man to actually admit it, but he was on unfamiliar ground too. Talking about it before now might have helped, though.

  
“Sure,” he said, sounding as stunned as he felt. He’d have to find another way to track down all the loot the Jedi must have stashed away, but maybe Obi-wan might be less likely to interfere if he saw Anakin as an ally rather than an unexpected burden. “Can we go now?”

  
Obi-wan actually properly smiled at that, a sight Anakin realised he’d never seen before. On the flights between Tatooine and Coruscant, then Coruscant and Naboo, Obi-wans primary emotion had appeared to be peevishness. After, he’d just been sad. Anakin found Obi-wan didn’t look quite so intimidating like this, and scooched towards him on the couch just a little.

  
“Certainly, if it will help you relax. I realise you’ve been having trouble with meditation, perhaps it’s time we started trying some alternatives,” said Obi-wan.

  
“Instead of meditation?” he asked, perking up, suddenly very hopeful. Any reprieve from hours of failing to do what the three year olds around him found so easy would make Obi-wan his friend possibly forever.

  
“As well as, I’m afraid,” said Obi-wan, clasping him on the shoulder as he sagged. “But I’m sure your classes with Master Yoda will see results soon, if we can get you in the right frame of mind in other ways.”

  
Still, it was better than nothing. And perhaps once he’d decorated his room, he and Obi-wan would be good enough friends that he could show him and they’d spend time in there together. Depending, of course, that Obi-wan wasn’t lying when he called himself pretty handy with machines.


	2. Chapter 2

The Maintenance bay was probably Anakin’s favourite place in the temple. It felt real in a way the rest of the rigid, austere building did not, smelling of grease and fumes and the tang of metal that Anakin had always loved. Bringing Obi-wan here was new, usually he only saw him here while in the process of being dragged out, not usually putting up too much of a fuss, but still not going quietly. Obi-wan enjoyed a good argument anyway.

This late in the evening it was deserted, all the day workers the temple employed to do the everyday mundane stuff gone home for the night. With Obi-wan following, Anakin made his way along semi-familiar cluttered pathways towards where the Maintenance chief kept his more problem vehicles, his boots still new enough that the tread caught lightly on the grating. He’d had to get new ones last week after an incident with the laundry.

Behind him, Obi-wan was looking looking around either in fascination or to avoid conversation. That’s what Anakin did sometimes, pretended to be really really absorbed in his homework that he just can’t talk right now, sorry Obi-wan. Maybe he hadn’t been helping much with the not talking to each other thing either, but being in an unfamiliar place while depending on someone who didn’t seem to like you very much wasn’t very good for relaxed conversation. Maybe Obi-wan thought he didn’t want to talk to him, but he couldn’t learn to Jedi properly if their only exchanges were Yes and No questions over what to have for dinner. He’d just have to suck it up and hope.

“Master Obi-wan?” he inquired, skipping around one last corner to find himself in front of the speeders left for routine maintenance or repair. “How can fixing speeders help me learn to meditate?”

Obi-wan’s gaze jerked toward him from where it had been examining what was in Anakin’s opinion a very poorly kept Z3425 Tarloh. If that was Obi-wan’s taste in speeders, Anakin really was going to have to educate him. It had shitty steering and no real thrust to speak of.

“You find working in here calming, yes?” asked Obi-wan, crouching down in front of the speeder Anakin was most drawn to. He wasn’t familiar with the model, and at a glance it wasn’t much to look at, but closer examination revealed sleek lines and a well thought out panel array. He looked around quickly for a instrument kit, finally finding one stashed in between the manuals for two different model Tarlohs. While he had been looking Obi-wan had opened up the interesting looking speeders forward panel and was gazing within, looking only a little lost. Anakin passed him a torch before clambering up beside him.

“Sure,” he answered, digging around in the kit for the appropriate leads, “when I’m concentrating on fixing things, there isn’t really any room in my head to worry about anything else. It all seems, well, less important somehow.” Finally finding them and plugging them in, Anakin frowned at the readings. Without an idea of why the speeder had been bought in in the first place, he might have to mess around a bit to work out what the problem is. Sure, he could go look in the log, but that type of thinking can bias a person.

Next to him, Obi-wan seemed content to watch him run through the standard diagnostics. Never particularly comfortable having someone look over his shoulder while he worked, Anakin felt himself beginning to tense up, pretty much the opposite of what he was going for. He always felt like this meditating too, like he was being judged for doing it wrong, even when his much younger classmates had as much trouble sitting still until their butt numbed as he did. He was supposed to be older, he was supposed to be better, the exception. If he couldn’t even sit still properly, how was he supposed to balance the force?

Letting the diagnostics run their course for now, he turned to face Obi-wan, who looked at him in turn in all apparent seriousness.

“Tell me about meditation,” he said. When Obi-wan just blinked at him, he continued “I know that’s not the sort of thing you’re supposed to teach me right now, but when Master Yoda explains it he says it all funny, and I don’t want to look stupid when everyone else knows what he means.”

“And because they’re all younger than you, that makes it even worse,” said Obi-wan softly.

Which, well, yeah. But at least Obi-wan was thinking about it, and didn’t act like he thought Anakin was stupid.

“Okay, we’ll start with the basics,” said Obi-wan. The front seat of a broken down speeder was not the best place to meditate, but they both shifted into an as comfortable a position as the space allowed, Anakin with his legs crossed and Obi-wans much larger frame tucked into the passenger seat, feet beneath his thighs.

“Breathing. Has Master Yoda taught you breathing?”

“Yeah, but I want you to teach me. When Master Yoda’s teaching I get distracted because he’s also teaching everybody else.”

“So you think you learn better with individual attention?” asked Obi-wan, and he didn’t sound like he was judging Anakin.

“Or no attention,” he said. “I learned a lot of stuff by my self back on Tatooine. Mom tried to help if she could, but she had other things to worry about.” Like making sure they had enough to eat, or that Watto didn’t gamble them away to someone a lot less lenient.

Obi-wan gave him a sad smile. “Unfortunately, true meditation with the force is difficult to learn by yourself. Although, once you have the basics down you should be able to to refine the technique to suite your own needs. I don’t think there are any two Jedi who meditate in the exact same way, because we are all unique even while connected through the force.”

“What’s it like for you?” Anakin asked. It was maybe a little heartening, that perhaps he couldn’t do what Master Yoda described because meditating would work differently for him, as it worked differently for all the other Jedi. That being different in this wasn’t quite as worrying as he had originally thought.

Across from him, Obi-wan seemed to be thinking things through. Probably, this wasn’t something he’d had to articulate before. Until recently, he’d been a student himself, and Anakin didn’t think he’d had much space over the last few months to adjust to the change in circumstance.

“Meditation, in my own personal experience, is like-” Obi-wan closed his eyes, and breathed out slowly “-is like laying in the sun. You close your eyes, because you don’t want to be blinded, but you don’t need to be able to see it to feel the warmth, the fluctuations of breeze or a cloud passing overhead.”

Anakin closed his own eyes and tried to picture it. For all he is supposedly strong in the force, he hasn’t been able to consciously call on it since he started his training. Master Yoda or Obi-wan can trick him into using it by distracting him, or directing their own flow of the force through him, but every time he tried to reach out and touch it on his own the doubts started setting in. Obi-wan has said it will come in time, but every class he spends with other Jedi Masters makes him remember that they judged him too old, and that perhaps they were right. When he learns the basics of light-saber forms, sometimes it is like he can feel it, just out of his reach, but he never seems to be able to take that last little step. Obi-wan described the force as warmth, but to Anakin that warmth seems to be that of fire, and he instinctively sheers away. Describing it like the sun seems right, the sun burns but what matters is the distance.

Maybe what he needs is mental distance?

“When I try to meditate with Master Yoda,” he said, “I think I start over-thinking things, just a bit. Like, using the force comes easy to me, except when I choose to use it, and then it doesn’t”

“That can be a problem,” Obi-wan said, and kindly doesn’t add that it’s a problem for three year olds, because that’s how old Jedi learning to use the force usually are.

“But I’m not a little kid,” Anakin said, definitely not whining. “It should be easier for me, because I’m older.”

Obi-wan shook his head. “Actually, it’s not a surprise that deliberate use of the force is more difficult for you. Over your life you’ve learned through experience what a human is capable of, and even though you know things are different for those strong in the force, it will take a bit longer to convince your subconsciousness of this. These things take time, Anakin, and this isn’t something you can just speed through on talent alone - like learning to wield a light saber. You need to examine your own thought processes, and teach yourself to think the right way first. Myself and Master Yoda will do what we can, but in the end this is up to you.”

“So, breathing?” asked Anakin

“Breathing,” said Obi-wan.

And as Anakin closed his eyes - half listening to Obi-wan drone on about using the rhythm of his breathing to tune himself into the rhythm of the force - he caught sight of a wizard looking mechanical journal cover propped up on the bench just outside the speeder, as if it had been just waiting for him to look in that direction.

He thought it would look even better on his wardrobe door. He’d just have to remember to pick it up later, when Obi-wan wasn’t looking.


	3. Chapter 3

The journal cover looks pretty great on Anakin’s bedroom wall, if he does say so himself.

Perhaps he doesn’t need to decorate his room with something fancy, when stuff that people just leave laying around seem to work just as good. So he starts looking out for other things that just might fit. Astronav maps are a big one, he grabs several of those during the course of one otherwise tedious afternoon and pins them up all next to each other on the ceiling with some rivets he found in the maintenance bay. He’s going to visit all these places one day, every planet in the galaxy, and it can’t hurt to know where he’s going.

It takes him a while to figure out what he wants to grab next. Posters and star charts are all well and good, but he needs some variety if his room is going to start looking less like a place he spends his time, and more like a home. He starts scouring the gardens accompanied by an increasingly bewildered looking Obi-wan, and eventually comes across a small, time roughened statue of some unidentifiable animal that no one could possibly miss. It’s hidden in a corner of the central west tower garden, inaccessible to all but the most determined of younglings. He had to do a fair bit of crawling through undergrowth to get to it, leaving Obi-wan to meditate alone in a more open grassy area. Just lately Obi-wan had been trying to be more understanding of Anakins eccentricities, and being abandoned mid session gets him no more than a raised eyebrow - even if he knows he’ll be making up the time later.

Meditation had been coming easier to him since that day in the speeder, and just last week he’d managed to push a rolling ball all the way across the room without any help from either Master Yoda or Obi-wan. They’d had Anakins choice of dessert in celebration, and Obi-wan had clasped him by the shoulder and told him he’d done very well. For the first time since he arrived at the temple, Anakin actually felt like he’s getting somewhere.

He doesn’t grab the statue right away, of course. Even if Obi-wan hadn’t been with him, dragging something of that size back to his room would be very obvious in the middle of the busy temple day. He bides his time, and on a night Obi-wan has plans elsewhere, he pretends to turn in early.

“Are you not feeling well?” asked Obi-wan. But the last thing he needs is an overly attentive concerned Jedi Master hovering about, seeing things he shouldn’t ought to have been seeing.

“Just tired,” said Anakin, “I won five rounds of sparring today, but I think my bruises have bruises. Senior Initiates kick HARD.”

Across the room, Obi-wan paused in his preparation for going out and disappeared into the fresher.

“I have just the thing for that,” he called out to Anakin from the other room. He emerged a moment later with a jar of some sort of salve, obviously home made. Anakin had seen him use it on himself a time or two, after a particularly difficult sparring session. He hoped Obi-wan didn’t want to try and spread it on himself, as dragging the statue back was going to take enough time as it was. But Obi-wan just handed the jar to Anakin.

“Try this, it always makes my bruises feel better.”

“Thanks,” said Anakin, trying not to look dubious. A virulent purple colour, the salve looked far more likely to make him break out in a rash than soothe his aching muscles. Still, Obi-wan hadn’t as of yet developed boils or some terrify lung disease, so there should be no harm in trying it. Later.

Obi-wan nodded, then, seemingly feeling he’d fulfilled his Masterly duties, he hurried off to whatever meeting he was now running late for. Anakin put the salve aside for later.

Leaving the apartment was easy, and, as all good padawans and masters were either out on business or tucked up safe asleep in bed, leaving the living area of the temple wasn’t much more difficult. He’d considered the logistics of shifting the statue up so many levels, had even thought about using a droid to help, but had eventually come to the conclusion that a missing droid would call more attention than if he snuck out by himself. The statue wouldn’t be that heavy, and he’d mainly be using the turbolift once he got it out of the garden. He’d ridden down it a couple of times with Obi-wan at the right time of night, and there’d never been anyone on it. The same held true tonight.

Anakin stepped out of the turbolift and into the garden, eerily quiet in its night time cycle. There were no true outdoor gardens on Coruscant, and the same held true for the temple, old as it was. From the smallest gardening nook to the room of a thousand fountains, all plant life tended to by the Jedi was kept alive by precisely calibrated environmental controls meant to match the individual planet of origin of the flora grown within. When he had first arrived at the temple Anakin had spent a lot of time in the various gardens, Obi-wan all too happy to provide answers to any questions he could think to ask. It had been one of the few things which could reliably get the man to smile at the time. The information he had gleaned was all coming in use now, as he knew the watering systems would not come on for several hours yet, and the lights would not switch back up until the sun rose outside. It would not do to track a trail of muddy irrigation water right through the temple to his front door, the dirt would be hard enough to clean up after as it was.

Crawling though the underbrush was more difficult in the dark. Anakin had skinned his knuckles on hidden roots and received more than one branch to the face before he paused to take stock. Jedi initiates, once they reached a certain level of experience, wore eye coverings while sparring. Anakin was not at that level yet, but he knew the basic principles could be applied to this situation. He closed his eyes, useless in the current darkness, and tried to sense the space around him through the living force.

All around him Anakin could feel the slow pulse of the trees, the gnarly, striving, shifting strength of the undergrowth, the bright sparks of little shoots just starting to grow beneath his hands. Each branch, each root, was a spiderweb of life he had to concentrate to perceive, but once he did he started forward again - this time without injuring himself in the process.

The clearing, unchanged since he was last here, was dimly visible - though the low lighting of the night time cycle reduced everything to various shades of shadow. Anakin pulled himself out of the hedge he had just climbed through and clambered to his feet, brushing his dirty hands on his tunic as he did so.

This had seemed like a far better idea when he’d first found the statue days ago. Still, he’d come this far.

First, he’d tried rocking the statue. It moved a little, but not enough to force the grass beneath it to relinquish it’s grip. He tried pushing it with his hands, then with his legs while laying on the ground to brace. Stupid poodoo statue wouldn’t shift any further, and he hadn’t even bought a lever just in case.

Anakin sighed in frustration, and lay back on the grass. Some expert thief he was, couldn’t even steal a statue no-one even remembered was there. He’d just wanted to achieve something - no wonder everyone always said he’d make a terrible Jedi - Obi-wan probably would have convinced someone else to do it for him by now. Or just lifted it with the force.

Anakin thought about that for a while.

Technically, he was supposed to be stronger in the force than Obi-wan. And he’d moved that ball last week, the statue couldn’t be that much harder. He only had to give it a nudge.

He got up from where he’d been sulking on the ground, dug his boots into the grass to brace himself, and tried to remember what it felt like to move that ball. He hadn’t dared try since, afraid it wouldn’t work again, but the feeling of connection, of letting the force flow through him was something he didn’t think he could ever forget.

He placed his hands on the statue, traced around the edges to try and get a firmer picture in his mind. Do or do not, Anakin thought to himself in wry amusement. There is no try.

So Anakin stepped back, raised his palms in a gesture he had seen Obi-wan and countless other Jedi use while moving objects with the force, and lifted the chunk of carved rock from the ground.

He almost dropped it straight away, of course. It quivered in the air and Anakin immediately broke out in a sweat, the muscles in his neck tightening. There is a big difference between rolling a ball and a sustained lifting, and the statue -now that he could look at it clearly- was bigger than he thought it had been. Could he drag it all the way to his quarters, or would he have to use the force the entire time? Anakin looked at the surrounding underbrush in increasing desperation, the statue growing ever heavier in his mind. This had not been a well thought out plan.

Giving up for a second, he placed the statue gently back down on the shadowed grass and grasped it with his hands, attempting to slide it across the grass with a tug. It moved easily enough over the damp turf, but Anakin knew it would be a lot harder once he got it to the brush.

It was. If Anakin had thought he’d gotten too many branches to the face on the journey in, it was nothing to the damage he sustained on the way out. After almost an hour of pulling and shoving and scrapes and bruises on places he had never got scrapes and bruises before, Anakin was almost ready to give it up for the night when he emerged into the clearing he had left Obi-wan to meditate in days before. He promptly fell over at the sudden lack of resistance, and lay in the grass looking up at the artificial sky for just a second to get his breath back. The irrigation had not been turned on yet, which meant he still had some time until the garden would get its first occupants of the day. This wasn’t the problem. The problem was Obi-wan, who was undoubtedly back from his meeting and, if he hadn’t noticed his padawan was missing yet, certainly would when said padawan attempted to drag a muddy statue though their living quarters.

Still, it wasn’t as if he could just hide the statue in a cupboard and hope for the best. Maybe Obi-wan wasn’t back yet, or was so tired from going through the same lightsaber exercises over and over and over again that he wouldn’t notice Anakin’s invasion. Stranger things had happened.

Once again, Anakin hauled himself to his feet and grasped the statue around its ears, doing his best to pull it toward the turbolift without leaving a very obvious furrow in the grass. After shoving it inside and punching in his floor code, Anakin again tried to work out how to get around the Obi-wan problem. He didn’t solve it there, nor during the fraught and nervy trip back through the temple living quarters, and he still hadn’t managed to think of anything when he found himself staring at his own front door.

He dithered for a minute, before reaching to punch in the door code. He didn’t get a chance to type it in, however, as a visibly irate Obi-wan chose that moment to open the door from the inside, his arms crossed. Anakin snatched his hand back, startled, and watched Obi-wan take in his filthy tunic, scratched up hands, and more pertinently the battered statue he was vainly trying to stand in front of. If possible, Obi-wan’s expression grew even stormier.

“Well, padawan,” said Obi-wan, “I do hope you have a good explanation for all this.”


	4. Chapter 4

Anakin had never seen Obi-wan look this expressive before. He had worked out early on that overt emotions were not something his master was comfortable with, and had tried to adjust his behavior accordingly. He was not a serious personality by nature, sometimes he slipped and did something overly familiar, but while Obi-wan had never seemed to hold it against him he had never looked at ease in those moments either. So Anakin had stayed withdrawn, and tried to treat Obi-wan the same way Obi-wan insisted he treat other jedi masters - with a solemn deference he suspected Obi-wan didn’t need to fake as much as he did. He had thought he might crack Obi-wans calm facade one day, but he hadn’t wanted it to be like this.

To stall, he began dragging the statue out of the hallway and toward his bedroom. He didn’t look at Obi-wan’s face, too afraid of what he’d see, but instead fixed his eyes firmly on his bedroom door. His bedroom was his, and he hoped Obi-wan would continue to honour that unspoke agreement if he didn’t get kicked out of the order for being a thief and a vandal. His progress was stalled, however, when the statue caught for a second on a raise in the flooring. He stumbled to the floor, too tired to even attempt to continue, his already raw hands slapping painfully on the hard surface. He felt perilously close to crying, which would just cap off what had been possibly his worst day at the temple so far. Just this once Anakin wished he knew how to let go of something after he’d decided to do it. If he’d left the statue in the clearing after finding himself unable to budge it the first time, he wouldn’t be in this mess.

“Are you done?” asked Obi-wan, sounding less than amused. After stepping back to let Anakin through the door he hadn’t moved from his position of disapproval beside the nook that housed their couch, seeming content to let Anakin dig himself deeper. Anakin had done his best to ignore the force rumbles of approbation that accompanied his pitiful attempt at defiance in trying to cross the living area and hide in his room, but the weighted glare of a disappointed Jedi Master is something that only grows heavier if you try to pretend it doesn’t exist. It seemed as though all the emotion Obi-wan had been suppressing until this point was now directed into judging Anakin’s actions without fair trial or hearing him out or anything else his exasperated tutors had tried to convince him was very important. If Anakin wasn’t being very Jedi right now, it was only because he was following his mentors example.

Abandoning his statue for now, Anakin stood up tall, shoulders back like Master Wendyam showed him in diplomacy class. He did his best to straighten his tunic, though it was not much use given how grubby it had gotten, then turned back to face Obi-wan.

“Sorry, Master Obi-wan,” he apologised, because that sort of thing was always best to get out of the way before people demanded you do it.

“Sorry for what, padawan? Disappearing? Your dirty clothes? The scratch marks leading right from the central west tower garden to the front door of your bedroom?” Obi-wan’s eyes seemed to narrow with each new charge, perhaps so he didn’t have to look at the mess Anakin had made of their living area.

“Uh, all of them?” Anakin replied. This was apparently not the right answer, because if at all possible it caused Obi-wan’s eyes to narrow even further. How he managed it in combination with his raised eyebrows Anakin had no idea.

“Do you understand what you did wrong, Anakin?” Obi-wan asked.

“Yes,” said Anakin. “I broke the rules.”

“Anakin,” Obi-wan sighed, “you don’t even know what the rules are.”

Obi-wan held Anakin’s eyes a little longer, as if searching for understanding. Anakin wanted to give him what he needed, but that was hard when he didn’t actually know what that was. It definitely didn’t seem to be enough to convince Obi-wan. Anakin hadn’t seen anyone deflate like that in a long time, as if all the energy keeping him going had just left all at once. Obi-wan sighed once, visibly giving up, and collapsed on the couch. He wasn’t looking at Anakin any more, but Anakin didn’t like it any more than he’d liked Obi-wan being mad at him. It would be so much easier if Obi-wan just told him what he wanted.

Anakin reviewed that thought, then quickly squashed it. He only had to do what Obi-wan wanted if it was what he also wanted. He got a say too, and Obi-wan being sad didn’t change that.

“Anakin, you didn’t talk to me,” said Obi-wan, addressing the ceiling rather than the padawan he was in the process of lecturing. “You’ve obviously been planning this for a long time, but not only did you not talk to me about your problems, you went out of your way to avoid having me noticing them.”

“I don’t have problems,” said Anakin, all evidence to the contrary. So he stole a statue, big deal. He only wanted his room to not look like nobody even lived in it like Obi-wan’s room did. He’d only caught a glimpse once or twice, but he hadn’t seen anything to disprove his theory that outside his role as a Jedi Knight, Obi-wan Kenobi was the most boring person ever.

“So if you don’t have problems, why is there a statue from the gardens in our living room?” asked Obi-wan. His eyebrow was doing that thing again, but Anakin wasn’t about to let it intimidate him. Unfortunately, he didn’t have an answer to that question that didn’t involve telling Obi-wan things that he didn’t want Obi-wan to know. About how, while he did want to be a Jedi, there were things about being a Jedi that he didn’t think he would ever understand.

Jedi weren’t meant to own things, which meant there was nothing that was permanent, that was theirs, which in turn meant there was no way to stop things from being taken away. The small personal touches to his bedroom, the stupid statue, his opportunity to have a better life. He didn’t know how to make it so he wouldn’t lose these things. He didn’t know how to make Obi-wan understand why these were things he was afraid to lose.

“You never asked to see my bedroom,” Anakin said. It was inevitable, it had always been inevitable, and this was the only way he could even try to contain how the confrontation would go. He had wanted to wait until he and Obi-wan understood each other better, but Obi-wan is a Jedi, and that might never happen. He would resign himself to returning the statue to the garden, the flimsy maps to the Astronav lab, and the other few small bits and bobs he had picked up over the past few weeks.

“You always seemed as though you needed space,” said Obi-wan. He had lost the over-dramatic skeptical look, and seemed to be calming down now they were have an actual discussion instead of avoiding the issue. He had sat up to look at Anakin instead of the roof, and his hands were in his lap rather than gesturing around about the arm of the couch.

“I did,” Anakin admitted, “but I think you gave me a little too much. I kinda feel like you’d prefer to be anywhere else than teaching me.” This made Obi-wan pinch the bridge of his nose, but Anakin could feel no return of the previous ill feelings through the force.

“Would you like me to come see your room?” asked Obi-wan, strangely gentle.

“Um…”

Did he? If Obi-wan was giving him a choice, did he want to risk getting into an argument all over again? And if he said no what would Obi-wan do, given there was still the statue to consider? Either answer was potentially disastrous, and the force wasn’t giving him any clues.

“Okay,” Anakin said, giving up.

“Are you sure?” asked Obi-wan. “You don’t sound very enthusiastic about it.”

He crossed the room toward Anakin, and seemed about to kneel down to his level before thinking better of it. He knew Anakin resented what he saw as being condescended to.

“I wanted to show you when it was finished.”

Obi-wan couldn’t seem to help making a quick worried glance at the closed bedroom, but he recovered quickly. His face passed through a variety of emotions too quickly for Anakin to parse, but what he settled on was-

-Well, Anakin didn’t quite know what it meant, as Obi-wan seemed to be concealing himself within the force even tighter than usual.

“Anakin, I would be honoured if you would show me your room. But it is okay if you don’t want to.”

“Even if there’s bad stuff in there?” asked Anakin, more than a little disbelieving. Obi-wan almost narrowed his eyes again, but caught himself, and Anakin had to restrain a hysterical giggle. It looked like he didn’t know how to wink properly, and was doing it with both his eyes.

“What sort of bad stuff?”

“Um, some old maps I found? And the cover lid of an old journal I found in the maintenance bay?” Anakin squirmed at the faces Obi-wan was deliberately not making. Anakin had never seen him be so careful, though he wasn’t sure why. He’d messed up, and Obi-wan was in charge of him, so why wasn’t Obi-wan acting how Anakin had thought he was going to act?

“Anakin, I know you’ve been having a difficult time adjusting to life at the temple,” started Obi-wan. He lowered himself to the floor, maybe to put himself at Anakins level, or maybe because he didn’t want what he said next to be so formal. “-and that’s fine, that was to be expected. I know I probably haven’t been making things any easier for you, but if putting some old maps that nobody wants in your room makes you feel more at home, then I’m not about to interfere.”

“Really?” said Anakin. “You don’t want to check to make sure I haven’t burgled the temple’s exclusive art collection?”

Obi-wan frowned, but Anakin could tell he was secretly amused.

“The temple doesn’t have an exclusive art collection, Anakin,” he said, “and as for checking your room, I’m happy to wait until you’re ready to show it to me.”

Anakin didn’t hug Obi-wan, but it was a near thing.

“And the statue?” Anakin asked.

“Has to go back to the garden,” said Obi-wan. “I don’t care how abandoned where you got it looked, there is no way it’s absence won’t be noticed. And,” he added, “you’ll be doing it by yourself. Think of it as learning the consequences of your actions, which in this case will also involve apologising to the gardeners for the dirty great hole in the landscaping. They should be used to that sort of thing, Jedi initiates are not so well behaved as they first appear, but expect some sort of punishment from that quarter too.”

Obi-wan smiled, as if remembering his own experiences, and got to his feet. Once he had dusted his robe off, he offered a hand down to help Anakin up too.

“But that can wait for tomorrow. You’ve been up far too late already, and you will be attending you’re classes in the morning.”

As punishments go, it wasn’t a bad one, even if he would be lugging the statue all the way back to the gardens by himself.

“Okay,” said Anakin. “And Obi-wan?”

“Yes Anakin?” asked Obi-wan, already heading to his own rooms.

“Thanks.”


End file.
